History at St Botolph's CE Academy
Intent
Our aim is for every child to experience a enquiry based and knowledge rich history curriculum, which inspires, challenges and motivates pupils. Our curriculum starts in EYFS and is progressive. Our history curriculum is accessible to all pupils, including those with SEND.
We aim for our children to have a a rich dialogue with the past, through historical enquiry. We want our children to understand their place in the world, and in the long story of human development. We want them to make sense of the striking similarities and vast differences in human experiences across time and place, and to make links between the different time periods studied. We want our children to understand local history and how it has shaped out local area.
Our history curriculum is linked together by “golden threads” (substantive concepts)
These substantive concepts are: Society and community, exploration and invasion, power, conflict and disaster.
We teach substantive and disciplinary (thinking like a historian) knowledge in combination as this helps pupils to construct historical arguments and analyse sources. This is because knowledge of the past must be shaped by disciplinary approaches in order to become historical knowledge.
Implementation
The history curriculum at St Botolph's follows the National Curriculum. In addition to this, we also use the history scheme from "Grammarsaurus" as a basis for our lessons and intelligently adapt this to ensure that our pupils' have an understanding of local history.
Through history, we aim for our pupils to understand their place in the world and their place in the story of human development.
Key knowledge and vocabulary is mapped out from EYFS to Year 6. Every history lesson starts with a recap of prior learning (core 4) and a recap of key historical vocabulary.
Impact
We assess pupils' knowledge in history after each unit. This is then used to inform future teaching and any gaps in knowledge are addressed in future lessons.
Substantive Concepts are used as golden threads to enable pupils to make links to prior learning. Pupils are encouraged to look at similarities and differences between time periods studied and previous learning. This is progressive and allows pupils to draw on their secure knowledge to help them understand new material.
Chronology is at the heart of our history curriculum and each unit begins with a chronology overview, where pupils are able to make links to the time period studied and previous units taught. They learn that some periods in history were "concurrent" and happening around the world at the same time. They also learn about British history and also world history.
Enrichment days for history and visits are mapped out across the year, to create engagement and embed the learning.